Monday, April 13, 2009

Special Issue of Journal of Public Relations Research on Social Media

Stoked. Last week Kaye Sweetser mentioned that Karen Miller Russell may be interested in running a special issue of Journal of Public Relations Research on social media next year. A few tweets later (with @kaye and @KarenRussell), it appears I'm lined up as guest editor.

Any public relations researchers out there want to help? I'm already looking for reviewers and trying to get people thinking of ideas for good article submissions.

I'm working on the initial call for submissions. Let me know if you've got any suggestions. The call may sound a little stuffy at the moment, but I do want to get articles that go beyond the breathless buzz-hype type reports I get every morning in my e-mail. (If you're on the same PR trade mailing lists that I'm on, then you probably know what I'm talking about.)

The Journal of Public Relations Research seeks scholarly articles for a special issue on public relations and social media.

This issue will include research that conceptualizes social media clearly and offers empirical evidence to build public relations theory. While the technologies of social media change rapidly, the underlying implications of participatory, interactive, ‘de-massified’ media on public relations are more permanent. This issue will offer a venue for discussion of what social media mean for public relations.

The guest editor encourages articles serving the interests of professionals looking to make sense of how social media influence their day-to-day work, and how their work in public relations influences the development of social media. Critical approaches are welcome too. In any case, the long-term value of such contributions hinges on the journal’s primary mission to deliver scholarship that creates, tests, or expands public relations theory.